Perfectly Clean
by Emmeebee
Summary: Hermione has been teased in the past, but there's something different about Draco Malfoy's special brand of bullying. Muggle!AU.


A/N: Warning: deals (shallowly) with issues of racism. I didn't feel comfortable with the idea of making his comments as vitriolic as a true equivalent to his attitudes in the books would be, so he's more ignorant-and-racist than intentionally-cruel-and-racist, but it's still there.

Hogwarts Writing Club Competition – prompt: icky

Word count: 730.

* * *

Hermione sat in the corner of the room, surrounded by the half-formed Lego castle that she had been constructing for the past half an hour. She would have preferred to be reading, but the carers at the after school centre always seemed to take that as an invitation to lure her out to play with the other kids. The nine-year-old had quickly realised that playing a potentially group activity by herself was less conspicuous than doing anything overtly solitary.

Humming under her breath, she added another row of red blocks to the spire she was working on. It was difficult to stick to the design she'd seen in her mother's medieval history book without it there to act as a guide, but she thought she was still doing fairly well. Individual components might be in the wrong places, but she was certain that they were all there.

 _One more row,_ she decided, and she reached out to scoop up a bunch of yellow blocks from the pile she'd grouped them in when she'd originally organised all of the available pieces by colour for ease of access.

"Why do you look like that?"

The sound of the disdainful voice pierced through Hermione's happy bubble of peaceful isolation, and her head snapped up in surprise. Hardly any children ever approached her. When they did, it was usually to tease her about her studiousness or her large front teeth. She couldn't think of what might have caught the boy's interest. Surely he had seen someone concentrate on a task before!

Her befuddlement only further increased when she realised who the intruder was. With lemon-blond hair and skin as pale as the moon, there was no mistaking Draco Malfoy. Yet she was the last person she'd have expected him to want to play with. In the few weeks she'd been at the centre, she'd noticed that he and his friends seemed to keep to themselves almost as much as she did. Plus, she'd gotten the strange sense that there was something more to their aloofness when it came to her. Draco didn't seem to like anybody outside of his small circle of friends, but she hadn't been able to shake the sense that he actively _dis_ liked _her_.

"Like what?" she finally asked.

He huffed and said, "You know," snootily as he crossed his arms and sent her a sneer that rivalled any she had ever seen. After a few moments of silent staring, he begrudgingly added, "Your skin, stupid. It's all brown and icky."

"I am _not_ stupid," Hermione declared, indignantly propelling herself into a standing position. She noted with pleasure that the action made her a few inches taller than him. "And my skin isn't icky. It's perfectly clean." She held her arm out to prove it, but he flinched and reared back in apparent disgust.

Narrowing his eyes at the proffered arm, he hissed out, "Don't you dare touch me. I wouldn't want that rubbing off on me."

Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes like a door-to-door salesman who refused to go away without a response. Never before had such venom been sent her way. Her classmates had been nasty to her – which was, according to a book she'd read, a toxic but normal part of growing up – but this was different. His objection wasn't with the fact that she preferred books to people and solitude to noise; it was, somehow, with _her_ herself. Desperate not to let him see how much he'd rattled her, she rapidly blinked the moisture away before replying in a deceptively light tone, "It might do you some good. Your skin is so pasty; it looks like you've never even _been_ outside before. Is that even healthy?"

She considered flouncing off, but she couldn't bear to leave her castle behind. Instead, she dropped back down to the ground and, determined to ignore him from then on, steadfastly set about playing once more. She managed to focus so intently on her project that she blocked him out completely until it was time to go home.

Only then, in the safety of the familiar little car and with only her mother for company, did she break down.

That night, her mother explained the concept of racism to her.

The next day, the bushy-haired girl returned to school with her chin held high and fire in her eyes.


End file.
